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Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

latimes.com

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Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#221

Post by icanhackit »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #200
skywhopper wrote: post #158

> "Still, the $10 million is orders of magnitude lower than a typical subway project, Musk said." Umm, and the capacity of these tunnels is also orders of magnitude lower than a subway. It would also be a lot harder to use and available to far fewer people. This entire idea should be laughed out of existence, but despite everything, Musk still gets fawning coverage for any crazy idea he spouts. Maintenance will be im…

> Umm, and the capacity of these tunnels is also orders of magnitude lower than a subway. Even assuming that capacity/dollar is actually worse than subways, they can still be economically superior, for the same reason solar+battery is beating nuclear. The ability to incrementally build capacity relatively quickly and with relatively low, incremental costs beats any system that requires billions of initial investment…

> You seem to be assuming a single tunnel per direction. Assume 20 instead.

I think this is the really important part. Think of it like a computer bus - do you want a single channel able to move a lot of data at once but with potential bottlenecks as various systems fight to talk to each other, or lots of channels able to move medium amounts of data without bottlenecking one component while favouring another?

When one channel is at capacity you move to the next, with further redundancy to spare.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#222

Post by ABCLAW »

dwild wrote: post #182
Luc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing a difficult but real situation with a perfect but hypothetical one. Things always are wonderful when they're research projects that don't need to conform to real-world limitations.

> difficult but real situation His first argument is that it's currently too expensive to have any innovation. This tunnel cost 10 millions $. Sure it's usage is still hypothetical, but you can't say this won't be much more accessible to innovate. I'm in Montreal, our subway barely changed in the past 30 years. I was lucky, I was affected by one of the only change they did in theses 30 years, 3 more stations on an al…

Maybe I can provide a bit more context re: Montreal.

Montreal's metro throughput is not gated by the tunnel capacity. It is gated by the amount of trains in operation. Adding additional cars on the 'already full line' would increase the line's capacity. Neither the orange nor the green line are close to full.

The issue with the orange line extension isn't that the lines are full. It's that 1) subway costs are heavily subsidized at the municipal and provicial level, 2) they were extended to Laval which funds the STL, not the STM, and 3) there was no revenue or cost sharing agreement between Laval and Montreal to subsidize the STM in proportion to the burden placed on the STM by Laval riders.

This issue with cross-subsidization also lies at the core of the municipal agglomeration which occurred in Quebec metropolitan regions.

Montreal won't consider additional subway expansion not because of financial and infrastructure cost reasons, but because of political ones, much in the same way that internal negotiations regarding the dual super-hospital projects were intentionally sabotaged for political reasons.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#223

Post by sibeshk96 »

One of the things I don't get about this concept is how they plan to avoid the surface bottleneck - if everyone's trying to get into the same number of limited holes in the road, then there's more and more congestion and traffic wanting that access. To make a 3d network of roads work, you'd also need a 3d network of buildings, other wise it's not really solving any problem.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#224

Post by em-bee »

ryanmercer wrote: post #207
em-bee wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a tight tunnel? unlikely. if we go that route, the worst case would be use as sewers. or for wiring, or package delivery.

>in a tight tunnel? unlikely. 12ft diameter gives you at least 8ft of internal space x a mile. Japan for example has 100sqft apartments. I've worked in an office, in Indianapolis, that wasn't even 8ft across and there were 20ish of us with desks against the wall so little space you had to slide all the way in for someone to walk down the aisle. You could cut a channel down the center for plumbing and electrical condu…

oh i don't doubt that it can fit. but i can't imagine it being popular.

japan has small apartments out of necessity. not because they like living in small spaces.

add that working or living under artificial light is not exactly healthy. this idea strikes me as something for an emergency shelter, backup workspace, but not for normal operation/living.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#225

Post by noobermin »

liotier wrote: post #184
kwhitefoot wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of Elon Musk's ideas is that underground you can have a three dimensional system of tunnels and that this can help solve some of the capacity problems.

As dense and as cheap as Musk's technological vision becomes, a question remains: why carry a car at all instead of carrynig people ? Why carry mostly dead weight ? The denser the network, the more acute that question - if Musk's vision is an ubiquitous three-dimensional underground transport mesh, then why does it seem to conscientiously avoid being a public transportation system ? Does Musk believe that saturating…

Because Elon owns a car company. That's fundamentally why.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#226

Post by xvilka »

Skye wrote: post #189
xvilka wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a huge problem with overheating because of the small gap between roof and a tunnel, it also reduces potential speed of the train.

IIRC the main heat source is the breaking of the trains combined with the high frequency of them. I suspect that using many cars will still release a lot of heat into the tunnels.

Yes, with a small gap between it is harder to install proper cooling systems and also natural air movement it very limited for cooling purpose too.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#227

Post by rohit2412 »

carlivar wrote: post #203
Isinlor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may have delays, but what have he failed to deliver? Everything is either work in progress or delivered. - internet payment platform, check - first privately founded company to do orbital launch, check - reusable cheap rockets, check - biggest rocket available + it's reusable, check - Dragon spacecraft, check - crew spacecraft, check (still needs testing, starting early next year) - Model S, check - Model X, check…

You mentioned the $35k Model 3, which I think is the worst since so many deposits were collected on this promise. This spring it will be 3 years since those deposits were collected, including mine (since refunded at about the 2-year anniversary). He also keeps pushing back the timeline for deposit holders. It has been 3-6 months away for over a year now. And there are anecdotes (which I know aren't data) of difficult…

Thai cave tor-pedo. Unintentional wordplay

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#228

Post by jfoster »

Luc wrote: post #132
jillesvangurp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tunneling is currently so expensive that there are few companies doing any innovation on how to properly utilize them. A big part of the problem is actually digging them in a way that is cheap and scaleable. Another part of the problem is the organizations doing the digging and doing the exploitation are typically have misaligned incentives and goals. For example, expanding subway systems is currently in the hands of…

You're comparing a difficult but real situation with a perfect but hypothetical one. Things always are wonderful when they're research projects that don't need to conform to real-world limitations.

It's funny. About 15 years ago, people would say the same about electric vehicles. You know the guy who made those work in appealing ways? Same guy.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#229

Post by ricardobeat »

Balgair wrote: post #208
dwild wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maintenance will be impossible. How so? Maintenance happens all the times in subways. In Montreal they do it during 4 hours each nights. In ours, they close everything down, thus we can no longer use it, but if we had multiple smaller one, we certainly could close one at a time and lower the perturbation. They could still close them all, theses tunnels aren't meant to be the only ways to drive either, even the bigg…

> Never heard of horizontal scaling? My SO is a soils engineer/geo-physicist, so I know a bit about the issues at play, mostly over dinner conversations. When it comes to large infrastructure projects like these, the problems are multitude and all very individual, especially in such a geologically active zone as the LA Basin [0]. Though Musk et al. should be congratulated for the incredible achievement of even trying…

> Honestly, I've no idea about the studies that they have undertaken

> can only be described as a deliberate attempt to endanger the lives of all people concerned

I can’t fathom how one statement follows the other.

Re: Elon Musk Unveils Boring Co's First Tunnel

#230

Post by ricardobeat »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #200
skywhopper wrote: post #158

> "Still, the $10 million is orders of magnitude lower than a typical subway project, Musk said." Umm, and the capacity of these tunnels is also orders of magnitude lower than a subway. It would also be a lot harder to use and available to far fewer people. This entire idea should be laughed out of existence, but despite everything, Musk still gets fawning coverage for any crazy idea he spouts. Maintenance will be im…

> Umm, and the capacity of these tunnels is also orders of magnitude lower than a subway. Even assuming that capacity/dollar is actually worse than subways, they can still be economically superior, for the same reason solar+battery is beating nuclear. The ability to incrementally build capacity relatively quickly and with relatively low, incremental costs beats any system that requires billions of initial investment…

With 20 tunnels you’d end up with a 200m+ cost per mile which is quite close to, if not higher than subway construction costs.
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